AND WHAT ABOUT BOAT COP? WHERE WAS HE? The company that owns the cruise ship currently sinking off the coast of Italy says the captain almost certainly made an "unauthorized" sail-by along rocky shoals. The captain also left the ship before the last passengers were safely evacuated—a maritime crime known as "abandoning ship."

Iraq is cutting the marionette strings, exercising its purported "sovereignty" by detaining hundreds of American workers who've been hanging out in the country, and carrying weapons, without maybe having all the right paperwork.

Speaking of puppeteers, the Associated Press is opening a bureau in Pyongyang, North Korea, and says—even though its reporters will move at the mercy of bureaucrats—that the operation will run just like every other bureau in the world.

Zappos.com customers have been punished by god for their profligate spending on shoes and clothing.

On the day we honor Martin Luther King Jr., let's not forget the larger (and arguably more threatening) framework for the assassinated minister's dream: addressing economic inequality alongside racial injustice. Also, let's remember: "The greatness of America is the right to protest for our rights."